In the just-released book Rendezvous with Injustice, Justo writes: “Patrick told me during one of his visits in July (2015) that PetroSaudi had hired a top Swiss lawyer to defend me and handle the press. He said he had also arranged an interview with a journalist who was close to Najib Razak’s party and wrote for The Straits Times, a Singaporean daily broadsheet newspaper. Paul gave me a list of questions and their pre-prepared answers a day before the interview. I was again being forced to confess to the crimes I was charged with and clear PetroSaudi of any wrongdoing. Incidentally, the reporter involved would receive ‘Journalist of the Year’ award for his article about me, and was later promoted to be head of the paper’s Washington bureau.”
1MDB whistle-blower Xavier Justo has revealed in his book how he was coerced into giving scripted answers to The Straits Times (ST) journalist Nirmal Ghosh to refute exposés by The Edge and Sarawak Report on the multi-billion dollar scandal.
Justo was in a Bangkok jail at the time when his former boss at PetroSaudi International Patrick Mahony and British private investigator Paul Finnegan promised him freedom if he agreed to do as he was told, and that was to say that the information he gave to The Edge and Clare Rewcastle of Sarawak Report was tampered with and fake and that they had told him they wanted to topple the Malaysian prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
